How Adaptable Are You? Take this Adaptability Quotient (AQ) Quiz and Find Out

Adaptability Quotient (AQ) is the new EQ (Emotional Quotient), which means one’s AQ is a critically important skill that will make the difference between excellence and extinction in the modern workplace. Measuring one’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing environments is an essential first step in dealing effectively with today’s world.

Whatever your adaptability assessment score happens to be, as busy executives, we know it’s easy to fall back on what has made us successful in the past. Or focus almost entirely on the things that drive day-to-day business performance. True adaptability requires us to challenge our deeply-held beliefs about things. And sometimes, these are the very things that made us successful in the first place.

Why is adaptability so easy to define, difficult to do, yet so important? I’ve read a lot about this subject, but one piece from the Harvard Business Review wraps it up nicely.

Our brains don’t like adaption. So, those who are more adaptable are likely to have done some pretty tricky thinking. Adapting in business is crucial, but when the “what’s in it for me” is more important, even than that, our brains are great at coming up with very rational ways to resist adaption.

It makes sense. Old habits die hard—especially ones that have contributed to our previous success. So, instead, our brains try to find “evidence” that justifies keeping questionable beliefs intact. But that is what adaptability is all about. It’s developing the confidence and mental agility to adapt even your most strongly held beliefs and assumptions if you find they might be wrong.

Here are six things you can begin doing today to increase your adaptability in the workplace and give yourself a competitive advantage. 

1). ALTERNATIVES: Require any change proposal to include several suggested alternatives as a matter of course—this encourages cognitive and organizational flexibility.

2). DISRUPTERS: Ask questions that encourage your team to think about what the disrupters on the edges of your business are doing – not just what your competitors are up to.

3). ASSUMPTIONS: Get into the habit of thinking and asking questions about what you think you “know.” Are there some firmly and widely held beliefs you need to have the courage to challenge?

4). PLANS: Spend quality time and energy thinking and reflecting on plans that take your business beyond what you know. What are the megatrends? What are you under-exploiting? What can you not know?

5). THREATS: Treat threats or risks to your business as an essential part of your planning process and address them with an initiative. Do you have people with time and a clear responsibility for exploring areas of potential market exposure? Do you measure future threats with the same passion as yesterday’s performance?

6). SPEED: Increase your “clock speed "—make annual planning easier and faster. Consider transforming any process you do on a monthly or annual basis into a “business as usual” activity that takes minutes instead of hours.
 

Take Our Adaptability Assessment Now

 

About the Author

Nancy Kane has been an Executive Agenda Group Chair for nearly ten years and serves four EA groups. She owns a consulting business that offers strategic business planning, marketing development, research, public relations, lead generation and sales support. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Alverno College and lives in Menomonee Falls, WI. Her AQ is as high as it gets.